Deeplinks Blog posts about File Sharing

In its ongoing battle against music piracy, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is backing a bill in the California legislature, SB 550, which permits the police to disregard the Fourth Amendment. SB 550 would allow law enforcement to search without a warrant any CD, DVD, Blu-Ray or other “optical disc” manufacturer to ensure the discs they are producing carry legally required identification marks. SB 550 easily passed in the Senate yesterday and is now headed to the State Assembly.

Google announced today that it will join Amazon in offering consumers a cloud-based music locker service. Google’s news, which had been rumored for some time, presents an opportunity to both answer and ask some questions about the future of the music industry.

Those questions make clear that while services like these do improve the ability for fans to access their music, they still only get us a little bit closer to the larger goal: making sure artists get paid and fans are happy.

UPDATE: The Court in OpenMind Solutions v. Does 1 – 2925 heard oral argument on April 11, 2011. At the end of the hearing — during which the judge expressed some initial concerns with OpenMind's attempt to lump the defendants into a class action — the judge requested that OpenMind and EFF submit briefs on the merits of the class action lawsuit. Those briefs will be due in two weeks; we will then wait for a ruling from the Court. In the meantime (as reported below), discovery remains stayed.

Further proof that the recording industry’s oft-repeated claims of the downfall of the entire music industry hold no water: a new report finding that filesharing has led directly to "reduced costs of bringing works to market and a growing role of independent labels." In other words, in the past decade, we have seen more music from independent outlets and at lower prices – something that consumers and music fans should all be happy about.